* Disclaimer –
the following post contains a couple pictures of a pig being butchered. If
you are squeamish at the sight of blood or dead animals, I recommend that you
not read this post. Thank you.
We got
back from visiting Darjeeling about 2 weeks ago. It has been so nice to be home again. Unfortunately a couple of days after returning
home it started raining and didn't stop for more than a week. That means that all of the clothes that we
washed after returning home didn't dry for over a week. A week of rain in Seattle is no big deal, but
here, where you must dry clothes in the sun and walk outside to go places or do
most of your work, it really becomes a pain!
But when I look outside and see the beautiful green hills and lush
forests, the rain really doesn't seem all that bad.
Our Paradise
Here in Sikkim the monsoon season lasts from about the end
of May to about the beginning of September.
We are right in the middle of it right now. We haven’t been doing much while it’s been
rainy because it is really easy to get sick.
We do our normal chores around the house, but not too much more than
that.
Last weekend there was a meeting for the youth group leaders
of West Sikkim at our church. In preparation
for the meeting Passang and I spent a couple of rainy days with other youth cleaning
up around the church.
Cleaning moss off of the church ground
Sweeping the church
Cutting the weeds around the church
Although the tools and methods are a little bit different
than what I am used to in America, the chores that need to be done are actually
quite similar.
On Monday my mother-in-law had one of her pigs
slaughtered. As sad as it is to see an
animal die and be cut up right in front of me, to me it’s actually quite
refreshing to be able to see exactly where my food is coming from. We are so removed from our food in the
US. It’s way too easy to forget that the
meat that we eat was actually at one time a living animal that had to die in order
to for us to eat. Plus freshly
slaughtered, home-grown meat is WAY tastier than anything you get in the
grocery store in America!
Cutting off a strip of meat
Our cousin weighing the meat
Tying 2 Kg bundles of meat together with strips of bamboo to
sell at the market
On Monday evening my didi and I made fresh pork momos for
dinner (SF: momos are a traditional Himalayan dumpling very similar to a
pot-sticker. They are usually served steamed
but can also be fried, and they are always served with a fresh home-made hot
sauce called “achar”). Here we do
everything by hand from making the wrapper dough and rolling out the wrappers
to folding all of the dumplings. They
were so good! Fresh meat really does
make a big difference.
Folding momos
Today is Passang’s birthday!
He is 31 years old! This year
will probably be the first year in a very long time that anyone has done
anything for him on his birthday.
Birthdays around here, especially for adults, are not very big events. Many of the adults don’t really even know
exactly when their birthday is. I’m not
doing anything big, just making him tacos for dinner. I made them for the family once before and
they loved them. Again I’ll be making
everything from scratch including the tortillas, re-fried beans, and salsa. Should be fun!
